Nereng

The Virginia vs Monitor mission should perhaps be swapped for a "Virginia vs Some Early Ironclads" as it is nearly impossible to sink in any other way than overcooking it with small calibre HE fire. There is a reason for why they didn't manage to sink each other in real life, after all. Also, as has already been mentioned, it's silly that you can't have a forward gun if you want to balance the ship.

There is also the concept of "unsafe handling of cordite" to take into consideration. I recommend the online book "Naval Firepower, Battleship Guns and Gunnery in the Dreadnought Era" by Norman Friedman. Especially interesting is page 98 in this regard. It is very likely that three British battlecruisers were lost at Jutland because High Command placed more importance on a high rate of fire than on safety. There has also been speculation that the Hood was lost in the same way. Basically, a german shell hits a turret, ignites the cordite that is stored inside the turret (should not have been stored there), and the resulting fireball travels all the way to the magazine through safety doors that were left open in order to facilitate a higher rate of fire. So for this game, i think there should be a small chance of "Hooding", especially in the early parts of the 20th century.

Yes. It should be made so that the diesel engine options are greyed out if you have coal or semi-oil selected, and coversely that you can't select one of those if you have diesel engine selected.

Which of the Academy scenarios do you enjoy playing again (perhaps over and over)? I like Destroy a Full Fleet because of how the enemy ships can be different each time. Sometimes I let the AI take over my ship and just sit back and watch how events unfold. The fact that we can now try it with different hulls makes it more fun. The Dreadnought or Battlecruiser scenario is another one I like. I recently tried the Attack an Armed Convoy scenario again. The first time I played it I used the imprtoved guns tech and it was a bit on the easy side, so I didn't look at it again. This time I tried the improved torpedoes and shells and that was almost too fun! Four light cruisers with extra deck launchers made for a twenty-torp volley of sneaky electric torps! I swcored 28 torpedo hits in that engagement! Electric torpedoes with 16 miles range is probably way overpowered in this scenario, but it is rather fun, too, so I hope it isn't changed much.

Here's an interesting photo I found. The caption says german 15cm gun on the Aisne canal, France WW1.

I guess that didn't really answer your question, though. I'm sure a 127mm gun would have way too much recoil to be used on a boat of the size you mention, though. Unless the boat in question was built for that purpose in the first place. Military issue guns of that size will normally come with recoil dampers which would typically be part of the reload system. Modern navies don't put that size gun on boats that small, though. They put a Bofors 40mm DP and several torpedo launchers instead. With perhaps a few Penguin SSMs!

During the Napoleonic wars Norway built a number of "Cannon boats" to harass the British blockading ships. A typical size was a 46 feet boat carrying one 24 pounder cannon. The crew would typically row the boat to firing range and make a hasty retreat once the gun had been fired. The boats had to be constructed to handle the recoil and extra weight of the cannon. The concept was originally Swedish. There is a Wikipedia entry that may be of interest if you search for "kanonsjalupp", but it is in Norwegian. In the decades following the Napoleonic wars the concept was continued with larger vessels which had better seakeeping. Below is a drawing of a late iteration (ca 1870) which had a 19 man crew, was powered by two small steam engines and carried a 170mm rifled muzzle loader.

In the years before Norway declared independence from Sweden (1905) they had the foresight to buy four modern ships from England. (It is always a good idea to have a bit of a navy when you declare independence!) They were built by Armstrong/Elswick, Newcastle on Tyne in the years 1897-1899 and were between 3800 to 4200 ton displacement and each had two 8.2 inch guns and a smattering of 6 inch and smaller secondary guns. The first picture is of Skagerakeskadren (the Skagerak Squadron, all four plus a number of smaller destroyer types) number two is of Norge and Harald Hårfagre, and the third is of Eidsvold.

The battle is over for this ship. A handful of the crew made it into a lifeboat.

I can see a scenario where you're doing commerce raiding and having the option to fit spotter plane(s) to your AC or BC. If you do you'll have a better chance of finding enemy transports or avoiding enemy capital ships, but it comes at the cost of other things you could have on your ship instead.

It can be things like easy access to critical resources, such as oil, nikkel or chrome. Or it can be a technological edge, like making better steel or optical instruments. Or it can be things like naval traditions or a large merchant navy or a large ship building industry or arms industry.

Why not custom scenarios? There are sites where people can upload mods for others to download and play, I think. Someone could recreate historic battles or what-if scenarios to show their mettle.

Yes, your second in line ought to fire at the enemy's second in line. Partly to avoid confusion about which ship's splashes are seen, and partly to not let the enemy second ship aim and fire in peace. That is how it worked in real life, but I'm uncertain about computer sims like this. Isn't it better to obliterate the enemy ships one by one? And more importantly, I suspect that coding it to be "correct" could be a bit of a nightmare. I would like to have complete freedom to choose everything, though. For example that all my three ships target different enemies with their main guns while their secondary guns could be targeting another three, smaller targets.

I suspect that this problem only gets worse the more ships you have. The same thing happened last time I tried the Destroy a Fleet quest with three Battlecruisers. The second one in line couldn't get a lock with it's main guns, but did have a lock with it's secondary 6in guns on the same target! As Steeltrap said, switch target or turn guns off/on momentarily.

The end result is also affected by how easy the target is to hit, obviously.